Eastern promise: gender lessons from the Islamic world

Many predominantly Muslim countries boast an enviably high proportion of female engineers. Are there lessons here for the UK? Andrew Wade reports.

The very fact this magazine regularly publishes a Women in Engineering supplement is symptomatic of a problem that stubbornly persists.

Despite the best efforts of many figures both inside and outside the engineering industry, female participation in the sector as a whole remains at embarrassingly low levels in the UK.

A recent report, carried out by the Centre for Economics and Business Research (Cebr) on behalf of the Royal Academy of Engineering, ranked the UK 58th of 99 for gender parity, behind countries including Brazil and Greece. Statistics from EngineeringUK show that the UK has the lowest proportion of female engineers across the whole of Europe, with just 9 per cent. According to UNESCO data from 2013, women make up just 22 per cent of engineering graduates. The statistics are simultaneously unsurprising and depressing, and the underlying issues are familiar.

Despite some notable exceptions – such as London’s Crossrail project – the UK has Europe’s lowest proportion of female engineers

“The UK has a disproportionately low share of women who study STEM subjects to 18,” Dr Hayaatun Sillem, deputy CEO and director of strategy at RAEng, told The Engineer. “Only around 20 per cent of A-level physics students are girls, for example, a percentage that has not changed significantly over the last 25 years.”

The problem is by no means confined to the UK. Failings here are mirrored in the US, where, despite widespread programmes to involve more women in engineering, participation rates have been virtually static for more than two decades.

“In the US since 1993, it has only increased the share of women undergraduates in engineering by 3 per cent,” said Dr Julie A Kmec, a sociology professor at Washington State University (WSU).

Rather than resorting to the introspection that so often accompanies this issue, Kmec and her colleagues are now looking outwards. In an effort to find solutions to the gender imbalance at home, new research is under way to examine how other countries are getting it right. And many of those countries have predominantly Muslim populations. Specifically, the study is looking at Jordan, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia and Tunisia.

In some sectors, up to 60 per cent of engineers working in Gulf nations are female

“The high GDP countries in the Gulf tend to have female representation up to 60 per cent in fields such as electrical engineering, computer engineering, chemical engineering and bioengineering,” said Dr Ashley Ater Kranov, a professor at WSU’s School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

A prominent member of the research team, Ater Kranov also has an academic role at Princess Nourah bint Abdulrahman University in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and has been studying the phenomenon of high participation in predominantly Muslim countries
(PMCs) for several years.

“Saudi only recently offered engineering as a degree option to women at one public university a few years ago,” she said. “However, it has had for years extremely high female representation in computer science, information science and IT. What is interesting as well, is that in my informal conversations with faculty and students all over the Gulf, female students tend to significantly outperform men in these particular fields.”

So not only are women participating in STEM subjects in much higher numbers than in the West, they are also excelling. But what are the factors drawing them in and, conversely, driving their Western counterparts away? According to Kmec, there are a variety of interlocking socio-political elements at play.

“We have this sort of ‘be happy, follow your dreams’ mentality, coupled with a macro-cultural value system… a system of gender centralism, which essentially is this notion that men are good at this, and women are good at something different,” she said.

“When I say the word ‘engineer’ in the US, I think of a man,” Kmec admitted, a trace of guilt inflecting her voice. “When you say ‘engineer’ in some of these countries, the first thought that
comes to mind – especially if you say a chemical engineer – it’s not a man.

Gender equality has long been a pillar of Islamic doctrine, and the religion has a rich history of empowering women through education.

“Some fields of engineering are actually gender-typed female in these countries, at least more so than here, because they don’t involve interaction in public… I know for a fact that in Saudi Arabia, women are highly discouraged from majoring in communications, for example, because that puts them too much in the public space.”

While there are undoubtedly social restrictions in some Muslim countries that could push women towards ‘backroom’ engineering roles, it’s important to acknowledge that these do not apply across the entirety of Islam. In fact, gender equality has long been a pillar of Islamic doctrine, and the religion has a rich history of empowering women through education.

“Although there is a perception that Islam represses women and does not give them the freedom to pursue education, this is far from the truth,” said Fatumina Abukar, a biochemical engineering PhD student at UCL who was recently shortlisted for a WISE (women in science, technology and engineering) Rising Star Award.

“Science and education have always been very encouraged in Islam. For example, Mariam Al-Ijliya, who lived during the 10th century in Syria, was employed by the ruler of the city as an astrolabe builder. In addition, one of the oldest universities in the world, University of Qarawiyyin [Morocco] was founded by a Muslim woman, Fatima al-Fihri, before women in the West were even allowed to go to university.”

In relation to the high rates of female engineers in PMCs today, Abukar believes there are two key factors at play. First, significant numbers of Muslim countries are either still developing, or are in politically unstable parts of the world. Studying engineering makes sense from a practical standpoint, as it is likely to provide a steady income.

“Second, in Islam, one is encouraged to pursue careers that will ultimately benefit society, so the population will tend to gravitate more towards professionally designated careers,” said Abukar.

These points are echoed somewhat by Kmec. In the US and the UK, physical infrastructure is not as visibly in need of improvement when compared to most developing nations. It makes sense that if you grow up in a country where there is a clear and obvious requirement for engineers, it’s a career path you’re more likely to follow, both for practical and moral reasons.

Dr Julie A Kmec

“We have a developed economy,” said Kmec. “We have infrastructure, we have roads. In developing countries, the economy does not necessarily allow people to have a choice. In Pakistan, for example, there are limited roads and bridges, and they get washed out every time there’s a storm. And so the infrastructure of countries that are developing… means people go to study what’s important for their country.”

The four countries in the US study were chosen for a variety of reasons, not least due to existing social connections the researchers already have. As mentioned, Ater Kranov has an academic role at a Saudi university, where she spends a substantial part of her time. Kmec’s co-lead on the project, Purdue University’s Dr Jennifer DeBoer, worked across Malaysia and Tunisia for her dissertation. And Dr Nehal Abu-Lail, another WSU engineering professor involved in the research, is a Jordanian national. Incidentally, she comes from a family of six, where all five daughters have become engineers.

A common thread across the four nations is the extent to which their populations practise Islam, with Malaysia being the one outlier at just 63 per cent. Jordan is 97 per cent Muslim, Saudi Arabia 93 per cent, and Tunisia almost entirely homogeneous at 99.5 per cent. By contrast, Muslims make up just 0.9 per cent of the population in the US, and 4.5 per cent in the UK. According to Kmec, however, there are socio-economic and political variations across the different countries that should enrich the research.

“We didn’t realise until we looked at the information,” she said, “but there’s great variation within these countries in terms of their GDP, in terms of labour force participation of women, their scores on individualism, women’s rights even. Women had the right to vote as early as 1957 in Tunisia, but only in 2015 in Saudi Arabia.

Gender imbalance has been the standard in Western engineering for so long that many now view it as a cultural norm.

“The women who participate in the focus groups will answer a quantitative survey, just giving basic demographic background characteristics of themselves. But the whole point is to be able to figure out what women are talking about, and how we can use the information we gather to craft a better quantitative tool that we can apply elsewhere in a survey.”

Ultimately, Kmec and her colleagues aim to shed light on the fundamental issues that are keeping female participation so low in countries such as the US and the UK. By exploring the gender balance of the PMCs in their study, the researchers will hopefully gain some insight into imbalance in the West – an imbalance that persists in the face of significant effort and resource.

Dr Ashley Ater Kranov

“Not much at all has been done to study what we are studying in these target countries,” explained Ater Kranov. “That said, there’s been a ton on what may be the factors to such low representation in the US. However, in spite of investing billions, the US hasn’t been able to make representation any higher, save for at a few schools that have made it a priority.”

Gender imbalance has been the standard in Western engineering for so long that many now view it as a cultural norm. Readers of The Engineer occasionally express their exasperation at the amount of coverage the topic receives, believing we should simply accept the status quo and
move on. But encouraging more women into the industry is absolutely vital, and should not be dismissed as an exercise in optics. The long-term health of the industry and even the wider economy are at stake.

“We know that engineering makes a significant contribution to society, so increasing the number of women in engineering is therefore critical to maintaining and improving the prosperity of the UK,” said RAEng’s Dr Sillem.

Dr Hayaatun Sillem, deputy CEO and director of strategy at the Royal Academy of Engineering

“Addressing gender diversity will not only help to bridge the skills gap, but could also improve business performance: evidence shows that companies in the top quartile for gender diversity are 15 per cent more likely to have financial returns above their national industry median.”

In an industry already struggling to generate enough skilled professionals to meet demand, it would be madness to willingly accept the shockingly low rates of female participation that currently exist. Shrugging of shoulders and essentially writing off 50 per cent of the population is not an option. On top of this, the economic upshot of gender parity is potentially massive, as Sillem points out.

“If gender parity in engineering graduates was achieved – which would equate to around 36,000 female graduates per year – the UK would climb from 14th to seventh in the Engineering Index, putting it above countries such as the Republic of Korea, Belgium, Finland, and Hong Kong. This would boost UK GDP per capita by 7 per cent, according to the Cebr study.”

Shifting the gender imbalance would have a very tangible impact, not least on the women driving the growth themselves. By looking to the example of the East, let’s hope the West can start finding some answers.

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The fact that gender imbalance in the field aren’t new is probably the reason it is so stubborn. In the English speaking world engineer has been a man’s role for so long that it seems totally natural.

In contrast nations like Saudi Arabia have a relatively clean slate when it comes to women in professional roles.

All of this can help understand why eastern nations are so good at making engineers but isn’t too applicable here. Perhaps the solution lies with a subject just touched on in this article. STEM subjects in school.

By the time girls are ready to take on A levels it is far far too late to draw them to engineering. Their perceptions of what is and what isn’t women’s roles have long been formed even if they haven’t already settled on a profession to shoot for. Perhaps we should be speaking less to teenagers about engineering and speaking more to kids about science & technology in general.

I would just like to comment on this article about the Muslim countries who have more female engineers than the UK. I am a female engineer who has a degree and MSc in Mechanical Engineering and wears a head scarf, with over four years experience within engineering (post-graduate) and been out of employment for the last four months, is the reason for not many female’s in engineering to do with the lack of them or that they cannot find a job? Also, in order to encourage more females to study engineering, should the companies not send female engineers to schools to give talk’s rather than males? I have seen with my own eyes when companies have talk’s at local schools and they send in male’s (even though I working for the company at that time) to give the talk, how can we change the perception of females minds when they see men on the stage, talking to them about engineering which before the talk they had no interest and no interest after.

Also, with countries like Saudi Arabia they give money for students to study at the universities, where in the UK, the students have to pay for tuition fees plus all the other fees that come with university study.

Sadly in my experience companies and universities often visit schools for talks at a point when the majority of pupils have already decided whether engineering is for them.

My university would often visit local schools to give science & engineering demonstrations and we were fortunate enough to have over 50% of the visiting engineers be female but we were giving the majority of our talks to 13 & 14 year olds. Here many of the girls, even if they loved the activities, had already decided they had no place or interest doing something similar as a job (I recall an all girls school where we did get 1 pupil saying she wanted to be an engineer). Contact with women doing engineering helps but it felt like we should have been interacting with pupils 3-5 years younger to make a lasting impression.

I am saddened to read of these issues. My neighbours daughter -now 17- has for some years (following my introduction) been interested in ‘our’ blog and indeed in learning of my former work. She recognises that ‘textile’ Engineering is only one aspect of a very diverse topic: but her understanding of the processes (and the machinery to perform such) has an immediate link to the topic which probably more than any other excites her. Clothing, fashion, etc. I am delighted to report that she has now proudly announced her intention to study Mechanical Engineering. As she says: she wants to prove herself in the company of her peers -primarily young men.
I am looking forward to being her mentor/support.

I believe I have blogged before about our Russian family friend. Her mother studied and was a Civil Engineer for the State railways in former USSR times, her father studied Geology and worked in oil and gas: her brother was in aviation medicine after studying medicine…as she says, our meal-time conversations were almost always about technical matters: and Katya studied textiles. 22,000,000 and probably more Soviets died in WWII and the majority were young men.
There was no possibility of re-building all elements of that society without female Engineers and technologists taking a pivotal part. I do recall that in the early 70s a Soviet building site (houses and infrastructure) had many women -invariably elderly- working in menial jobs. And of course the majority of operatives in the factory in which I was working in Kursk were women: as was the quality managerer, Chief Laboratory official, etc. Their husbands, fiancees, partners were dead! The state recognised that they were lonely, and yet still able to perform valuable service: even if not in ‘normal’ occupations for women.

No, we don’t have such lessons to learn.
Will we now be getting a tangential piece of pseudo-theology on the merits of the Christian or Buddhist faiths for supporting and enabling diversity in engineering?

The West has fewer female engineers I would suggest not due to our lack of Islamic values but the wide variety of well paid jobs of both technical and non-technical natures open to all peoples. One should not look to the Gulf for models of diversified and broadly speaking, sustainable economies but the West, although recent pre-occupations with Banking has somewhat reduced this diversity and hollowed out other industries.

People will choose those opportunities which are most accessible and which offer the greatest reward for the least cost, however one personally defines these terms. In any economy engineering is foundational and consequently always offers an excellent career path. Thus in any society and economy where there is a limited diversity of opportunities engineering will be present and will attract proportionally more interest.

As the diversity of opportunities increases the attraction of any one choice decreases.

Perhaps engineering in the West is simply not attractive enough: does not offer the rewards versus the high entry costs of other occupations. Perhaps Women are more discerning than their male counterparts who still balance the cost / benefit analysis in very rudimentary ways and perhaps this leads to a self-fulfilling cycles which entrenches gender imbalances.

This model does not preclude historical, sexist barriers women faced to entering industry or residual affects that may still occur but generally, I would argue, inequalities arise today because women are CHOOSING other career paths on the basis of an informed cost benefit analysis that does not find engineering sufficiently compelling.

If industry wants to improve the gender balance then its going to have to address the inherent cost / benefit analysis from a more female perspective – personally I don’t think it will. Given the high entry costs to an engineering career, the slow career progression in most companies and the often unfavourable working hours required – Women will wisely continue to choose different paths that better remunerate them for the commitments they give.

Perhaps if males had to balance the time demands, family commitments and the financial burdens women make daily; they would choose different careers as well.

Good and thought provoking article. I have travelled in Middle east quite a lot and only very occasionally met female engineers in the Islamic countries, of course cultural issues do get in the way of such experiences.

The subject of getting more females into engineering always gets a good response from engineers and clearly has no quick fix. However, the issue of getting girls to study physics is at the root of the problem followed by encouragement of girls to move into technical studies by preferential financing probably (i.e. positive discrimination).

I also believe that conversion courses for females who have studied other sciences could be developed and financed.

Previous articles have a also considered developing engineering as a normal curriculum topic in secondary schools. However, this has a similar problem to physics in lack of teachers, it is still well-worth considering further.

I used to work in aerospace in the U.S.A with loads of female embedded software engineers. Of course, they were paid lots and they could work flexible hours to suit their family needs. Perhaps UK industries’ factory management by suited skin-head thugs may be an issue?

I think there are many factors for the reason there are more girls wanting to be engineers in the middle east than girls in US or UK.
For a true analysis, you might have to explore the biological aspect of it, and its influence on gender norms. It is more typical for women to enter job fields requiring more socialising and nurturing, (social-workers, nurses, teachers, even hairdressers) and you have to realise the biological difference in a man and in a woman and how it would affect their behaviour. I used to think that gender-differentiated behaviour was a social construct, and that men and women could have similar interests but due to society enforcing the gender’s preferred interest, we were limited in choice. That may be true, but after considering the biological factor, the 2 different sexes have different functions and that may influence (typically, most) of our behaviours and interests.

In an environment where women have more opportunities and more choice (in the “western” countries), perhaps they are able to cultivate their interests more freely, thus taking jobs they have interests in. Whereas, in countries, some in the middle-east, where women have/had fewer opportunities and less choice, they would want to create more gender equality, thus wanting to get the jobs more male dominated to perhaps show their capability (which they no doubt have). what I think I’m saying is that in countries in the Middle East, some young women feel they need to prove their capability due to the oppression they’ve felt in times of their life, whereas, most girls in the western countries do not. (SO HEY, girls may not like the more systematic jobs or jobs that require labour, and that might possibly because of our biology? but it’s okay cause equal doesn’t mean same, and we don’t need to be the ‘same’ for our job/role-in-society or BODY to be valued)
The other HUGE reasons, is the cultural norm that engineering is meant for males, but may not be due to the abundant amount of feminists challenging these notions.